That this Hugh thus spoken of was Hugh de Payen cannot certainly be determined, but the fact that his surname is not given, but simply his Christian name, rather implies that his surname was the same with his under whom he held, and who is related as being "the son of Pagen." The conclusion can hardly be resisted that the great Crusader was the son of him on whom King William so abundantly showered his favors, and that it was this favor with King William which opened the palace doors of King Baldwin at Jerusalem, and gave to the poor son a home and the prestige of his influence and his power. Pagen or Payen, was one of William the Conqueror's chief barons; and Robert the Duke, under whom Hugh went to the Crusades, was the son of the Conqueror, thus placing the two sons in direct communication of friendship with each other. The conclusion is at least very natural and certainly very probable, that Hugh de Payen (the son of Payen) was really the son of him of Domesday, Edmund being his oldest son and heir (pp. 30, 31).

It will be observed, in the first place, that a complete non sequitur lurks in this logic, the extracts neither affirming that Hugh was a son of Pagen, nor giving his name as Hugh de Pagen. In the second place, Crusading histories plainly declare that Hugh de Payen, Chief Master of the soldiery of the Temple [Magister militia Templi primus] and founder of the Order of Templars [Ordo militiæ templi Hierosolymis], so far from being, though of Norman descent, a native and a resident of England, or a companion of Robert the Duke, son of William the Conqueror, in the Crusades, was a native and resident of France, a French chevalier or knight, who went to the Holy Land with French Crusaders, and who during all his course in Palestine was associated with French compeers. Evidence of this is readily accessible. The old French version of William Archbishop of Tyre, a text of the XIIIth century, recounting how the Orders of the Temple began, says:

Cil qui plus maintindrent ceste chose et le firent en droit eus, et les autres amonesterent de fere ce meismes, furent dui (deus freres) chevaliers, dont li uns ot nom Hues de Paiens delez Troies; li autres Godefroiz de Saint Omer. Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens occidentaux, XII, vii, p. 520; or Guillaume de Tyr et ses Continuateurs, ed. Paulin de Paris, I, 442.

purpose of recognizing the order of Tem- Once his passage was paid to America, but
plars, of establishing its rules, and decree- the ship sailed leaving him in the midst of a
ing the white robe for its members, was good time with friends inland. Again he
held, not in England, of English prelates, was given £50 to go to London to study
but in France, by archbishops and bishops law, but he lost the money at play in
from the heart of the country, namely, the Dublin on the way. Then he undertook to
episcopal seats of Reims, Sens, Aube?, Cit- study law at Edinburgh, whence he was
eaux, and Clairvaux, and convened at Troyes, presently driven by his creditors to the
in the midst of them, very evidently and very Continent. For the next year or two he
appropriately, because this was the city stand-"tramped it" through Holland, France,
ing nearest to Payns, the home of Hugh de Germany, and Switzerland to Italy. Then
Payens, and still the residence of his people. he buried himself in London, and at last
More than a score of years passed away, came to the surface holding a pen in his
and then this great knight returned to his hand with a drop of ink at the end of it. It
native land to obtain aid for the taking of was the drowning man clutching at the
Thereafter Goldsmith was Gold-
Damascus. The same chronicle shall tell straw.
smith -until he died, in 1774. An office-
seeker, a hack-writer for the reviews and
the booksellers, an unlucky publisher, and a
jolly good fellow; hand and glove with John-
son, who afterward wrote his epitaph, with
Smollett, and with Sir Joshua Reynolds;
and at last a successful author on his own
account; he both conquered fate and
tempted her; but fast as he made money
spent it faster, and when he died his fame
was about all that was left to him.

where and to whom he went:

Eu tens qui vint après en l'esté, Hues de Paiens, li premiers mestres du Temple, et autre gent de religion que l'en avoit envoié eu roiaume de France por requerre aide aus Barons et secors à la terre d'outre mer, tant que il peussent asseoir cele noble cité de Damas, s'en furent retorné en Surie et orent avec eus assez amené gent à cheval et à pié sanz grant chevetaine. Guill. de Tyr, XIII, xxvi, ed. cit. 1, 512.

In other words, on going home, as he naturally would, for reinforcements, this Hugh de Payen did not return to England nor lead back to Palestine a company of Englishmen, but But what a fame it is! In a score of he went to France, to the spot where he be- witching traits no writer in the English lanlonged, where he was best known, where he guage has ever equaled him, and few men would wield the greatest influence and be have won in a fuller degree the sympathy rewarded with the largest success; and he and kindly regards of their race. With an conducted back to the siege of Damascus inexhaustible fund of experience to draw "une grosse suyte de Gentilshommes Fran- upon; with a marvelous power of transmutçoys," as the translator into modern par- ing the real into the imaginary; with every lance, Gabriel Du Preau, renders the pas- refinement and delicacy of thought; with sage. humor, tenderness, and grace; and with a style unapproachable in its charm of ease and simplicity; he left a store of writings in prose and verse, the best of which are immortal. Undoubtedly Goldsmith wrote more than will ever be collected; but the edition of his works before us is claimed to be more nearly complete than any other, and is certainly an improvement in scope. as well as arrangement over Bishop Percy's of 1801 or Prior and Wright's of 1837.

We regret exceedingly to rob the Ipswich Branch of the Paine family of the glory the author of this volume has honestly sought to throw around its origin; but the plain truth is that its author's deductions are opposed by relentless historical facts.

OLI

GOLDSMITH AND HIS WORKS.* LIVER GOLDSMITH ran a great "Hues de Paiens delez Troies" means, risk of being set down as a shiftless Hugh of Payns near Troyes: Troyes vagabond. His genius saved him, but his being a well known city of France, on the left bank of the river Seine, about ninety miles E. S. E. of Paris, and Payns being a village about seven and a half miles from Troyes, of which Hugh prior to his crusade had been, doubtless, the feudal lord or nobleman. Presently the official sanction of the order is related:

genius was discovered almost by accident. He became most illustrious of Bohemians. Few lives of forty-six years have compassed a greater variety of fortunes and misfortunes. He was born in Ireland, the son of a poor clergyman, which was calamity number one. In childhood small-pox marked him for its own. At Trinity ColNeuf auz demorerent einsi en habit du siecle, lege, Dublin, he led a "sizar's " life, wearing que il vestoient teus robes, come li chevalier et its badge of poverty, and fulfilling its menial li autre bone gent leur donoient por Dieu. En nuevisme an ot assemblé un concile en France offices. At an early age he mastered the dedenz la cité de Troies. Là furent assemblé fine art of borrowing. The pair of scarlet li arcevesques de Rains et li arcevesques de breeches in which he presented himself to a Sens et tuit leur evesque. Li evesques d'Aubane meismes i fu qui estoit legaz l'Apostoile, li abés bishop for examination for orders cost him de Cisteaus et li abés de Clerevaus, et maintes his chances in the church, that color being autres genz de religion. Là fu establiz li ordres considered fashionable but not canonical. et la regle que l'en leur dona por vivre come gent religieuse. Leur habiz fu commandez à estre blans par l'auctorité l'Apostoile Honoire qui lors estoit, et par le patriarche de Jherusalem.

The Works of Oliver Goldsmith. Edited by Peter
Cunningham, F.S.A. 4 vols. Harper & Brothers.

That is to say, this council called for the $10.00.

The first volume opens with Goldsmith's longer and more important poems, of which "The Traveller" recites the impressions received during his European tour, while "The Deserted Village" is most widely linked with his poetical fame. Next come twenty-four miscellaneous poems; then the three dramas, "The Good-Natured Man," "She Stoops to Conquer," and the "Scene from the Grumbler"; and finally "The Vicar of Wakefield," which was written simultaneously with "The Traveller," and sold for £60 to satisfy the author's creditors. Volume II is divided between "An

Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe," which was the beginning of Goldsmith's reputation; and "The Citizen of the World," a series of curious and amusing letters, on society and manners, purporting to be written by a Chinese philosopher resident in London. In Vol

ume III we have the eight numbers of "The Bee," a faintly encouraged weekly which Goldsmith attempted in 1759; and about 350 pages of essays, acknowledged or unacknowledged. Volume IV gives us the short memoir of Voltaire, the lives of Beau Nash, Archdeacon Parnell, and Lord Bolingbroke; contributions mostly reviews to the Critical and Monthly Reviews from 1757 to 1760; some extracts from the "History of the Earth and Animated Nature," a compilation which as originally published extended to eight volumes; a long translated poem, "Vida's Game of Chess," now first printed from Goldsmith's own MS.; and a few letters. The "History of England," the "Survey of Experimental Philosophy," and the "Grecian History," are for obvious reasons not included.

the moon we should at once clap Boccaccio on the shoulder and call him Giovanni, or probably Nanni - which is equivalent to Jack- as every Italian would; but we should bend in reverent awe before either of the two other mighty spirits. him, would be the last man in the world to deem And Giovanni, as his biographers fondly call the difference uncalled for or unreasonable.

The

study of Dante, for example, he would of
course go to some masterly and exhaustive
essay like that of Dean Church. So, too,
Mr. Symonds's Italian Renaissance would
give one the historical background of these
early poets on a much larger scale. But for
short, clear, instructive, readable accounts
of the poets named, with their environment
and achievement included, nothing could be
better than these collected magazine arti-
cles. They give much in little space, are His celebrated "Decameron," of which
well written, and are exceedingly interesting.
They take one back into the Italy of the
past, and place him in the presence of his
hero.

Of the thirteen poets described, the names of seven at least are household words, and nothing new of any of them will be expected from such a work as this. But who can tire of the old old story- Dante, man of It is evident that Mr. Cunningham has many "haunts" and of no "home"; Pebeen painstaking and honest with the text trarch and his Laura; Boccaccio and his throughout; and he has supplied an en- "Decameron"; Tasso, and his "Jerusalem larged index. He has also adopted the Delivered"? The house in which Dante notes of previous editors, added many new was born still stands, an ancient monument notes, and has distinguished Goldsmith's, in the very central part of old Florence; for the first time, with his own name. The and we have the opinion of the archæolopresent publishers have given the work that gists for it that elegant library dress in which Macaulay, Hume, Gibbon, and others have already appeared. And within and without the edition is beyond question the best of Gold smith to be had.

ITALIAN POETS.*

NOT
OT the Italian poets of today, who
might be followed to their "homes
and haunts" as Englishmen and Americans
search out Tennyson, Browning, Long-
fellow, and Whittier; but poets dead and
gone, whose "homes" and "haunts"-and
works - alone remain; beginning of course
with the immortals, and descending to minor
names of the period immediately before the
present. Dante, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Michael-
angelo, Berni, Guarini, and Parini are
sketched by Mr. Trollope; Petrarch, Vit-
toria Colonna, Tasso, Alfieri, Giuseppe
Giusti and Giuseppe Belli by Mrs. Trol-
lope. The sketches have distinct but not
predominant topographical details. First
and foremost they are biographical — per-
sonal bass-reliefs carved on an historical
groundwork. The course of residence is
carefully traced in each case; city views and
bits of landscape are introduced wherever
they belong to the subject; houses of birth
and death are visited whenever they can
be found; tradition, reminiscence, and
romance are dexterously added; and the
great works of the poets, without being
critically estimated, are intelligently ex-
hibited to the reader. The total result
is pleasing. If one wanted a profound

Boccaccio was born in Florence. house cannot be pointed out with accuracy, but we can follow his steps through the lanes and alleys he frequented as a boy.

Mr. Trollope takes the apologetic view, is a sort of Italian "Canterbury Tales," the word "decameron" meaning a "ten days' spell or bout at anything." A company of seven young Florentine women and three men fly from Florence, during the terrible plague of 1348, to one of the villas in the environs, and pass the time in such amusements as are attainable. Principal of these is story-telling. "Each of the party tells a story every day, and thus in ten days a hundred novelettes have been produced."

Of Tasso's birth-place the landscape is thus sketched almost with the colors of a George L. Brown:

A curving line of deep blue waters, fringed with mild white foam, softly laves the foot of the cliffs on which Sorrento sits and smiles dreamily amid her orange groves in the dreamy, orangescented air. Yonder, across the liquid plain, rises Capri. On the opposite side of the bay a above Vesuvius' awful crest. tuft of vapour, white and soft as a plume, waves The mountains behind Sorrento are furrowed with deep narrow gorges, down which many a torrent plunges toward the sea, overshadowed by luxuriant bowers of foliage, and sometimes murmuring a deep bourdon to the sound of voices chanting the litany of the Madonna in a wayside chapel, or the sharp jangle of bells that call to worship from some crumbling tower. Sails, white, brown, or red as autumn leaves, are wafted over the quivers under the sunlight with that exquisite

the small arched stone doorway of the house is
absolutely the same, and in the condition in
childhood passed so often beneath it.
which it was, when the sommo poeta in his
Petrarch was a great traveler for his time;
had "homes" at Parma, Padua, Milan,
Venice, and Arquà; "haunts" at Rome,
Venice, Naples, and Vienna; and visited
Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Ghent, and Paris.
The estate at Avignon which was his favorite
resort for many years has been obliterated
by modern improvements, but the house
wonderful turquoise-tinted Mediterranean that
which he built at Arquà for his last days
- a shrine for many a pilgrim. tremolar della marina which greeted Dante's
There are the rooms he lived in, the little eyes when he issued from the aura morta-the
grapes and olives, the view on which his eyes limbs on the brown sun-baked shore.
study where he died, the garden which gave him dark dead atmosphere of eternal gloom. Half-
rested when he looked forth from the casement. island shapes swim on the sea-horizon veiled in
His chair is preserved, and one or two other
relics. ... On the little piazza in front of the silver haze, and, over all, the sky of Southern
church-a natural terrace overlooking the valley blue! Sky, sea, island, silvery vapour, shadowy
Italy spreads an intense delight, an ecstasy of

still stands

- stands his tomb.

...

Another monument

...

As

naked fishermen stretch their brown sun-baked

Soft

is a fountain covered by a massive stone gorge, and groves of burnished greenery studded
arch, wherein are collected five scattered rills with golden globes, are not different at this day
which formerly trickled wastefully down the from what they were when Tasso's eyes first
terraced slopes of Arquà. The poet gathered opened on them more than three centuries ago.
them into an ample reservoir, from which the
Of the six less familiar poets sketched in
abundant waters gush into a lower basin that these volumes, Berni was born just at the
serves as a drinking place for animals.
voices sounding through the still October air. tially to the school of Ariosto, and owes his
we approached the fountain we heard women's end of the 15th century, belonged substan-
A group of maids and matrons were washing
linen there. One sallow, black-browed damsel fame chiefly to having rewritten an unfin-
head, and was about to bear it home. A thirsty Innamorato." Guarini was a native of Fer-
had poised a copper vessel full of water on herished poem of Boiardo's, the "Orlando
dog lapped from the lower basin. Humble bene-

fits these, conferred on humble creatures; yet rara, a contemporary of Tasso, a pedagogue
than the inditing of an epic about Scipio Africa-
perchance not less worthy of human veneration and an office-seeker, a man whose upright-
nus, or the erection of a column to celebrate ness hardened into stiffness, a "soured, dis-
some bloody victory.
appointed, discontented" man; yet whose
one memorable poem, "Pastor Fido," is "of
all poems comparable to it in reputation the
lightest, the airiest, and the most fantastic."
With Parini, Alfieri, and the two Giuseppes,
we reach the last and the present centuries.
The sketch of Parini and of his satirical
poem, "Giorno," gives us curious glimpses

In any enumeration of Italian poets, observes Mr. Trollope, Boccaccio must stand third in order by the same law of gradation which places Dante first and Petrarch second; but he admits that "the step from the second to the third is a terribly long one."

Could the three men revisit the glimpses of

tions given over to the sword or driven into
slavery, with the single consolation that a
better civilization grew thereby upon the
ruins of the old. Six chapters are devoted
to Jengis Khan and his successors, and the
remaining four to the western Mongols or
Kalmuks, who are best remembered by the
story of their extraordinary migration in
1771, when 70,000 families fled, in the depth
of winter, from their homes on the Volga
across the frozen steppes of Tartary to the
borders of China.

The two remaining volumes, together
amounting to 1082 pages, were published
in 1880. These make the second part of
the history, and treat of the so-called Tar-
tars (Tatars) whose numerous tribes are

known under the common appellation of the
Golden Horde, and who, under Mongol rul-

ers, boasting descent from the great Jengis,

secured a footing in central and eastern

Europe. This involves the early history of line H. Dall has written an account of a journey Russia, when it was virtually a Mongol prov- she took in 1880 to Colorado, Utah, and Caliince, and brings to view the struggles by fornia. She traveled somewhat with the air of a which the Slavic race gradually threw off the professional invalid, and seemed a little put out foreign yoke and the influence of Tartar all the way along at finding herself for the first time "commanding neither attention nor respect domination upon the social and political

Asia and eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, institutions of the empire. This division of on the ground of simple womanhood." She was

History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century. By H. H. Howarth. 3 vols. London: Long

World. keen-sighted and skillful artist in human

The Literary World.

BOSTON, JANUARY 28, 1882.

Entered at the Post Office at Boston, Mass., as second-class matter.

BULWER-LYTTON: The Soul of Books.

por- When Carroway, the revenue officer, in this same story, is killed, we read:

traiture. But where the interest of charac-
ter is made a subordinate one, the novelist

must have an extraordinarily fertile invention if he is to make any marked success in There is no Past, so long as Books shall live! a field where his rivals are the large majority of writers. If the story-teller, as distinguished from the character-painter, has a narrative style which is original without being strained or affected, he will be certain of a far larger hearing for his tale than he could otherwise gain.

The Saturday Review for December 31 last signalized one of its learned and accurate articles on "American Literature" with this paragraph: Of American novels Homoselle, My First Holiday, and The Land of Gold, a tale of the earliest Californian settlers, are, on the whole, favourable examples.

We do not know how Mrs. Dall will relish her First Holiday book of travels being called a novel, even a "favourable example." We have heard of books being reviewed by their covers, and this is not the first instance the Saturday

Review has given us of the result.

Cambridge, Mass., is said to have a Shake

speare Club, at a recent meeting of which Mr. Higginson, Dr. Elisha Mulford, Mr. Hudson, Mr. Rolfe, and Dean Gray were among the readers. Mrs. Ole Bull, who was to have taken the leading female part, was unable to be present. Mr. Hudson introduced the reading with

"He was a wonder, a genuine wonder," Mordacks said, "shining example upon very little pay. I fear it was his integrity and zeal, truly British character and striking sense of discipline, that have so sadly brought him to, to-the condition of an example."

The pathos which goes with the highest humor appears in Mrs. Carroway's answer to the sympathy of Mordacks:

Whenever there is light enough to show the sea
"I sit in the evening by the window here.
and the beach is fit for landing on, it seems to
my eyes that I can see the boat with my hus-
band standing up in it. He had a majestic way
of standing, with one leg more up than another,
sir, through one of his daring exploits; and
little children in the kitchen peep and say
whenever I see him, he's just like that; and the
Here's daddy coming at last, we can tell by
mammy's eyes' and the bigger ones say 'Hush!
wondering which of them is right; and then
you might know better.'" And I look again
there's nothing but the clouds and the sea.
when it is over and I've cried about it it does me
a little good every time. I seem to be nearer to
Charley, as my heart falls quietly into the will
of the Lord."

Still

The success of Mr. Blackmore's novels is largely due to his possession of this rare and precious gift of an original and very He has never equaled, striking manner. and probably never will equal, the romance of Lorna Doone, the book which, though not the first written by him, was the first to win him special favorable notice. It was a book the proof of whose merit lay, it seems to us, in the strength of the opinion excited for or against it—such favor or dislike being always a testimony to some peculiar power in an author's work. To some of us this romance seemed to possess an inimitable grace, and the heroine to be one of the most delicately charming creations of a novelist's imagination; while the slowly-spun narrative, full of quaint simplicity and rich humor, was a mental refreshment to readers accustomed to novels constructed much after the fashion of some of our modern build- Christowell it is said that the "loveliest Mr. Furnivall is of this opinion, expressed ings, with a rapidity proportioned to their lady in the land has not such eloquent, in the Academy: "That Mr. Browning is the slightness. The literary course of novelists lucid, loving eyes; and even if she had they strongest man who now writes English poetry varies; some beginning feebly, growing to would be as nothing without the tan spot the strongest who has written since Milton died maturity of power, and then declining to a -no sane man will deny." second childhood of weakness and decay; a

some informal remarks.

The class of 1853 at Yale was indeed a famous one. It included Andrew D. White, E. C. Stedman, “Ike" Bromley, George W. Smalley, Wayne MacVeagh, Charlton T. Lewis, Benjamin K. Phelps, and the late Delano A.

Goddard.

The Vienna Neue Frie Presse recently pub

lished an article containing extracts from Edmund Burke's "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent," and the authorities confiscated the whole edition.

Mrs. Rossetti represents the aesthetic type of English women. She is tall and slender, with auburn hair very much frizzled. Her head ap. pears in many of the pictures painted by artist

æsthetes.

Oscar Wilde lectures in knee breeches, and

is an admirer of Mallock and Walt Whitman.

Next to his humor, Mr. Blackmore's strongest characteristic is a love of nature and of those animals which in his opinion rival the human in intelligence and goodness. No one can describe with more poetic fancy the beauties of a rippling brook; trees and flowers, a good dog and a good horse, are the themes on which this genial writer waxes warmly eloquent. Of the dog in

over them."

very few going on steadily in increase of LITERARY BALTIMORE AND ITS NEW

while others again, like Mr. Blackmore, put
vigor and fullness to the end of their career;

the best of themselves into their first work
level.
and never after reach to their own highest

We read Christowell, as we have read all
of the author's later books, not because we
expected to find in it any extraordinary in-
terest of character or incident, but because
we were sure of entertainment of a certain
kind, that which comes from an easy-going
narrative flavored with an abundance of de-

MR. BLACKMORE AND HIS NOVELS. lightful humor. This quality is the author's
A
GOOD manner of his own of telling his distinguishing characteristic, and it reminds
tale is one of the most valuable qualities us of Scott's, being wrought like his into
a story-teller can have, nowadays especially, the whole substance of the work, so that it
when half the world seems to have taken is difficult to separate and give any quotable
up the novelist's pen. When thousands of specimen of it. Let us, however, give this
emulous writers are laboring at the same from Mary Anerley, a story published a
task it is difficult to be fresh in invention, | year or more ago:

LIBRARY.

A Princely Offer.

BALTIMORE, MD., Jan. 22, 1882. Enoch Pratt, one of the solid business men of this city, and president of the National Farmers' and Planters' Bank, has formally proposed to the mayor and city council to establish and endow a free circulating library for the benefit of the whole city," at a cost of over one million dollars, provided the city will grant and create an annuity of $50,000 per annum forever, for the support and maintenance of the library and its branches. Mr. Pratt, in his letter to the mayor, says he has already, in pursuance of his plan, contracted for the erection of a fire-proof building on his Mulberry Street property, capable of holding 200,000 volumes, which will be completed in the summer of 1883, at a cost of $225,000. This he will deed to the city, and he will donate in money the additional sum of $$33,000, on the condition mentioned. He proposes that a board of nine trustees be incorporated for the management of the "Pratt Free Library." No trustee to be appointed or removed on religious or political

grounds. Associated Press Dispatch.

THE literary fame of Baltimore is retrospective rather than recent. Within the memory of men stil living, it contained a group of poets, novelists, and essayists of whom any city might be justly proud. Among these, were Edward C. Pinkney, whose graceful lyrics, "A Health" and "The Serenade," won for their author a and in the run of stories there needs must All genuine sailors are blessed with a strong national reputation; John P. Kennedy, whose be some sameness of plot, situation, and in- faith; as they must be by nature's compensation. Swallow Barn and Horse Shoe Robinson gave cident. Only novelists of the first rank, perpetual fluxion, they never could live if their Their bodies going continually up and down upon promise of a brilliant literary career, but who who deal with character rather than with minds did the same, like the minds of stationary early abandoned literature for politics, and becircumstance, can count on finding their landsmen. And these men have compressed came Secretary of the Navy under Mr. Fillmore ; from small complications, simplicity; being out John Neal, the first American writer for Blacksupply of material exhaustless. Human na- in all weathers and rolling about so, how can wood's Magazine, who found a congenial home in ture is the only theme that can never fail of they stand upon trifles? Hating all fogs, they Baltimore a half century ago; George H. Calnew and ever-varying interest, and there is blow not up with their breath misty mysteries, no limit of opportunities afforded to the purely in God and the devil. and gazing mainly at the sea and the sky, believe vert, the fastidious scholar, who commenced his literary life in Baltimore, as did also Jared

volume contains much curious information

Sparks, the historian; Woodworth, author of Mr. John W. McCoy. It has 38,000 volumes on literature, of the honors won, of the pecuthe "Old Oaken Bucket"; Brantz Mayer, whose its shelves, embracing every branch of literature. niary profits, of the famous twenty thousand Captain Canot; or Twenty Years of an African The Johns Hopkins Library, under the able pound check which the Longmans paid Slaver is as realistic as the narratives of management of Dr. Wm. Hand Browne, is Macaulay on account of the copyright for De Foe; and David Hoffman, whose Chronicles rapidly becoming one of the most valuable in his History of England, and of the poem of Cartaphilas, the Wandering Jew, has been the Middle States and South. Besides these which brought the poet $40 a line. The pronounced the most learned, curious and there are the Library of the Mechanics' Institute, original work that America has produced. the Masonic and Odd Fellows' Library, the Most of these writers have passed away. Bal- Library of the Young Men's Christian Associa about "Rejected MSS.," "Literary Heroes," timore can boast of no living writers that com- tion, the Maryland Historical Society Library, "Successful Books," and "Literary Sopare with them. Even aspirants for literary the City Library, etc. Baltimore has never been ciety "; offers discriminating advice upon honors seem to have disappeared almost entirely a good market for the sale of books, and the "Literature as a Staff" and "Literature as from the Monumental City, until the celebrated bookstores are neither numerous nor large. a Crutch"; illustrates "The Seamy Side of query of Sydney Smith: "Who reads an Amer-Those at present existing can be counted on the Letters" and "The Consolations of Literaican book?" may be changed to "Who reads fingers of one hand; Messrs. Cushings & Bailey ture" with many relations of fact; and in a Baltimore book?" Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Murphy & Co. being the oldest and short takes the reader behind the scenes at attributes the literary apathy of Baltimore to best known. a dozen different points of experience. A the unrivaled delicacies of the table which ABOUT AUTHORS AND AUTHORSHIP.* successful journalist, a disappointed magaTHIS little manual, Authors and Author-zinist, and an editor each tells his separate ship, whose expected arrival was an- story. nounced in the Literary World of December The latter part of the book only is a 3d, has made its appearance. It possesses little tedious, and its general line of rethe first requisite of success, in being emi-mark is not such as would tempt one to nently readable; and the second, in treating choose the literary path. A stronger point of a fertile theme in a fresh way. Those who might have been made where the question is asked: "What is your precise object in litcontemplate suicide in the form of making literature a profession cannot help receiving erature? What is success?" The convica caution

make it the gastronomic capital of the world, and says the principal monument of the city

be crowned with a canvas-back duck. Baltimore is eminently a social city, indeed, N. P. Willis called it the social Athens of America. An evening party is more appreciated than an evening lecture; a german" more enjoyed than a conversazione; a feast of terrapins is

44

more relished than a feast of reason. Still,
it must not be supposed that the city is an
American Boeotia. Far from it. Its people
at least a direction - from the
are cultivated, refined, and elegant, but their
tastes are not literary or artistic. In all the earnest thought and well-considered words
amenities of social life, they are facile princeps. Mr. Shepherd brings to bear upon the sub-
Baltimore is not, however, even at the present ject. Those who think better of their rash
day, entirely without resident authors, though
they are, "like angels' visits, few and far be-
tween." Among those who have earned some
thing more than a local reputation may be men-
tioned Mrs. Mary Neal Sherwood (daughter of

John Neal) whose translations from the French of Henry Gréville, and other modern novelists, have been very popular; Mr. Eugene L. Didier,

whose Life and Letters of Madame Bonaparte went through four editions in four weeks in this country, and was republished in England, where it reached a third edition, and who is also the author of a Life of Poe, and a contributor to leading American magazines and reviews; Mrs. Charles Tiernan, author of Homoselle, one of the most popular of the Round-Robin novels, and for several years a clever magazine writer; Dr. Wm. Hand Browne, formerly editor of the Southern Review and long a zealous literary worker; Edward Spenser, author of the popular American play, “Kit; the Arkansas Traveller,"

and of several clever magazine stories, who of late years has devoted his pen to journalistic work; Mr. S. Teackle Wallis, whose two volumes on Spain gave promise of a rich literary future, but who is now content to give his admirers only occasional addresses, instead of works of enduring value; and Mr. J. Thomas Scharf, author of a History of Maryland. Baltimore is well supplied with libraries, but they have not been very much appreciated by the resident population. The Peabody Library, founded by the munificent donation of George

Peabody, is one of the most magnificent in the

purpose, and all readers, will be amused by
the quiet humor that pervades the whole
book. This is particularly noticeable in
such comments as attend the advice which
Harper's "Easy Chair" gives writers for the
press, when it asks them to send their MSS.

without

any accompanying remarks upon the state of their health, the condition of their purse, or any family or personal history whatever. The anecdotes of Hood [p. 228] and of the German baron who tried to be "lively" are still more comical.

tion is a sound one that authors should be

animated by higher aspirations than desire of either fame or money, and the book would have been none the less true and practical if this idea had been followed up further by emphasizing the power of a writer to mold the world. We might all of us well think less of the market value of literary productions; more of power, less of "pudding."

Yet if the price of a book were to be the criterion of its value and interest, this book,

Authors and Authorship, should sell for a good deal more than $1.25. And they who buy it will be pretty sure to lay aside a second $1.25 to procure the Pen Pictures of Modern Authors which is to follow.

THIS

After a preface, in which Mr. Shepherd thanks those authors and publishers who FOOTE'S ANNALS OF KING'S CHAPEL.* have allowed him to use their writings - the book being largely a compilation of matter HIS is an honest history of grave and vexed matters. King's Chapel, Boston, already in print - he begins what he mod- was founded and continued for generations estly calls his "pickings and stealings" with as a Church of England parish, and is now Carlyle's saying that "excepting the New in the hands of Unitarian Congregationalgate Calendar the biography of authors ists. For its present pastor to tell the story forms the most sickening chapter in the his- of its earlier years, and especially the history of man." As a sort of offset to this tory of its ecclesiastical change, is at the gloomy view of a literary life Thackeray is best a delicate task, requiring both charity quoted, who, however, seems to go rather and courtesy. Mr. Foote shows both. Intoo far in the other direction, when he says deed we do not recall a book on such a theme of Blanchard (a poor author who cut his which has shown so amiable and balanced a throat with a razor while in the delirium temper. The repose of the gray ancient of a fever) that "his career, untimely con- church, and the silent monuments of past cluded, is in the main a successful one." centuries within and around it, seem to have The whole book is made up of such pros steadied and toned the historian's pen into and cons. The compiler weighs with impar- great calmness and dignity. The book is tial judgment the chances of literary success wisely and even elaborately illustrated with and failure, instances many valuable writ- portraits, monuments, and autographs, and ings that brought the author neither fame has a respectability of appointments such as nor money; tells of the varying rewards of

world architecturally. It now numbers 70,000
volumes, but they are not of a popular character,
nor are the "people" expected to frequent the
Peabody, as they do the Boston Public Library.
The Mercantile Library has recently moved into
its bright new quarters, and has secured a new
The Literary Life. 1. Authors and Authorship. Edited
lease of life through the enlightened liberality of by William Shepherd. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25.

Annals of King's Chapel from the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day. By Henry Wilder Foote. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Little, Brown & Co. $5.00.